


The Eyes Have It - Carpool Karaoke edition

by FaerieChild



Series: Spooks - Bond crossover universe [5]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Spooks | MI-5
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 20:21:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6535021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaerieChild/pseuds/FaerieChild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A joint operation between MI5 and MI6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eyes Have It - Carpool Karaoke edition

It wasn't often that Mallory turned up in Q Branch. It was a bit of a walk from the part of Whitehall where M had been assigned offices but they were currently monitoring an important businesman. The man was suspected of being involved in the financing of terrorism and they had been keeping an eye on him in a joint operation with MI5. Ever since 007 had started hanging around Q Branch, however, M had become wary of joint ops and had made it his personal mission to keep on top of any nonsense.

Q was where he expected him to be, at a standing desk at the head of the room leaning over his peronal laptop with four monitors surrounding him. Behind him, Tanner lingered watching Q fondly. M had discovered the pair had been close friends at University and it showed in a lingering fondess and penchant for shared jokes.

Mallory cleared his throat. 

Q paused, plastered a smile on his face and turned around. “Sir. What can I do for you?”

“How's the surveillance going?”

Q winced. “He's discovered carpool karaoke.”

“Anything in the manner of of useful operational intelligence?”

“He likes wanking in the shower?”

“Q, I'm serious.”

Q let out a frustrated sigh and tapped a button to unmute the feed he was monitoring. Aerosmith's rendition of 'I don't want to miss a thing' bled out over the speakers. Mallory winced as the mark crooned loudy in the privacy of his own car, half a key flat.

“Cut the op.”

“Can't. He's on a roadtrip out of London. Newcastle, possibly. We suspect a meeting.”

“Q, the Head of the JIC is monitoring this one personally and we have a meeting with Section D at Thames House in half an hour.”

“Mallory, I can do a lot. Unfortunately I can't do anything about his taste in music.”

M gritted his teeth. “We have to go. R can patch it through?”

“Its not 1940 anymore, you know. Its a bit more technical than 'patching'.” Q harumphed.

Mallory raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, sir,” Q deferred. He wasn't going to pick an argument over this point. Under a minimised tab was the evidence that James had caused an inordinate amount of destruction in Uzbekistan in the midst of extracting himself from the country three days earlier than scheduled and Q needed all the goodwill he could from M if they were still going to get the weekend off together.

Half an hour later on The Grid at Thames House, Sir Harry Pearce shook the hand of the Chief of the SIS as Mallory stepped into the the room with his Quartermaster in the pod beside him.

“Pearce.”

“M. A pleasure, as always. Quartermaster,” Harry nodded.

"Sir Harry," Q smiled. They knew each other casually of course, but now was not the time. 

“Shall we?” Harry gestured toward the conference room. “Ruth is waiting for us already. She's been collating the intelligence on this one. I believe Eve Moneypenny was of considerable assistence in this matter.”

“Its at times like this that I thank God both those women are on our side,” Mallory deadpanned.

The corners of Harry Pearce's lips curled upwards in a slight smile. “Indeed.”

As they stepped into the room Q let Mallory and Pearce do the talking while he immediately removed his laptop from his shoulder bag and went to join Ruth and Eve. Within a few minutes he had the connection from Q Branch set up and the Live Feed connected up to the projector. All eyes in the room gravitated towards the blurry white image on screen.

“Why can't we see anything?” Pearce asked.

Q adjusted his glasses. “Well, Sir Harry, it would appear our mark has a penchant for drive-in burgers.”

“Do you mean to tell me...?”

“We have an excellent live feed of the inside of the discarded burger wrapper that is currently dumped on top of the pinhole camera we installed.”

Sir Harry Pearce veritably growled in frustration at the absurdity of the situation. “Well at least put the sound on, Q!”

“I'm afraid it gets worse,” Mallory hesitated.

“This is a joint operation! I insist we have full access to all surveillance methods!”

Ruth, who was listening with one ear to an earbud from the sound feed cleared her throat, “Uh, Harry...you may not want to do that.”

“Ruth, not now. Put the sound on.”

Q and Ruth shrugged at each other. Mallory closed his eyes and pinched his nose as the most tone-deaf rendition of 'I believe in a thing called love...' pierced through the strained atmophere of the room.

“We could use that in interrogations,” Ruth piped up.

Harry levelled a very unamused stare at his beloved.

“Well sorry, Harry, but it is sort of funny. The things people do when they have no idea they're being watched!”

Mallory turned around at the comment. “After six hours of this, Miss Evershed, you'll excuse me if I've stopped seeing the funny side. Q?”

“We have police and CO-19 stationed at the docklands ready to intercept and an agent on the ferry from Amsterdam.”

Mallory's head snapped up. “Q? Harry? Whose agent, precisely, is this?”

Q blushed slightly. With all the strength he could muster he avoided making side eyes in Ruth's direction. It was, after all, her brother who was playing the part of the secret weapon.

“When is Bond due back from Uzbekistan, Quartermaster?”

Q was proud of the way he managed to look Mallory in the eyes. “Three days, Sir.”

Mallory stared hard at Q. “And if anything had changed there I would, of course, be the first to know about it?”

Q opened his mouth to speak but Ruth got there first, butting in in the middle of the conversation. “I have been in communication with the agent, Mallory. With any luck he won't even be needed. Its merely a precaution.”

There was no CCTV to hack in the area of the docklands where the meeting was due to take place, but with the unnamed agent successfully landing and making his way to the warehouse on foot, Harry sent a request through to the police commander to send the officers on the ground into position.

The massive relief of the radio cutting out as the engine was switched off told the assembled party that the car had parked and Q and Ruth switched the feeds over to the equipment that had been set up in the warehouse a few days before.

A second car had parked in the empty warehouse, a silver ford focus with false plates to mirror the flashy mercedes the businessman had arrived in. While all eyes were on Ruth's manipulation of the surveillance equipment, Q stepped aside with his laptop and quietly began hacking the car's on-board computer.

A man emerged from each of the cars. They talked and shook hands. Their mark went to open the boot and removed a black leather suitcase.

“Untraceable bearer bonds,” The man explained. “Half now, half in six months.”

“Spaceba,” The second man accepted the suitcase just as, from outside, the sudden noise of something being knocked over and both men went to ground.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” Pearce snapped.

“No idea,” Ruth shrugged. “Probably just a fox, I should think.”

Mallory looked on in concern. “And the mark?”

Any further discussion was interrupted by the room bursting with men with guns, yelling in Russian, hotly pursued by the distinct figure of a muscled man in a finely tailored suit weilding a stolen uzi sub-machine gun.

“Jesus Christ,” Harry swore. “Where the hell did they appear from?”

“They're gunrunners, Harry. This is the docklands. They must have had a nest nearby,” Ruth tapped at her keyboard.

Sir Harry Pearce was staring at the screen. “Ruth. A word?”

Ruth looked up at the screen, at the suited figure standing over a pile of bodies with the cowering businessman curled up on the floor. “Oh, look. James is back from Uzbekistan.”

“Might I have an explanation, M, as to why there is a double-O agent in the middle of this operation?”

“Pearce, you know as well as I do I have no bloody idea why James Bond is there.”

Ruth and Q shared a look. Meanwhile on the floor the man had clearly pissed himself, going by the stain on his trousers. Abba started blaring from the car stereo.

“Q!” Mallory snapped. “For God's sake do something!”

The Quartermaster looked up from his laptop, blinking innocently at M's enraged expression. “Sir?”

Mallory rolled his eyes. “As much as I love Dancing Queen, lets see if we can do something about the soundtrack?”

Q pressed a button and the stereo short circuited and then caught fire, followed by the rest of the car and finally the fuel tank. “Looks like an electrical fault, Sir.”

Watching the pyrotechnics, Bond waited until all was calm before discarding the uzi and lifting the cowering and slightly-charred businessman in a fireman's lift out to the waiting emergency services.

“Q....” Mallory rounded on his Quartermaster, “Q, if I have the slightest inkling you had anything to do with this...”

“He probably just decided to take the scenic route,” Ruth explained, looking rather flustered. “Newcastle is lovely. Have you been? All those old buildings...”

Harry scrubbed a hand down his face as orders were sent through and a police officer came jogging over to 007 with a mobile phone.

“Bond.”

Mallory didn't so much snap as sigh, exhaustedly. “What the bloody hell are you doing, James?” 

“Mopping up loose ends, Sir.”

“You'll excuse me if I don't manage to suspend my disbelief when you turn up three days early in the middle of a rival operation.”

“I found a connection between my op and the gunrunners Q was monitoring with Ruth. I couldn't risk a leak and decided to pursue it myself.”

Sir Harry Pearce snorted. “Well, that's one way of putting it.”

Mallory looked around the room. The Quartermaster. Ruth Evershed and James Bond, willfully keeping him out of the loop. He was infurated. Blood rushed to his face as he prepared to unleash his full – and rarely tapped – wrath upon the unsuspecting people before him. It was Harry Pearce, of all people, who put a calming hand on Mallory's shoulder and shared a baleful smile. “Its fine, M.”

“Pearce they went right under our noses.”

Pearce shrugged. “Plausible deniability.”

“Pearce he had a sub-machine gun!”

“Self defence,” Harry shrugged. “Clearly one of theirs.”

“The Russian mafia!”

“Definitely self defence,” Harry reiterated. 

“The willfull destruction of property!” Mallory spat.

“Oh, I shouldn't worry about that,” Sir Harry Pearce shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heel, “The Head of the JIC hates Abba.”

“Deliberately circumventing established communications protocols with the field commander.”

“The greater good, Mallory. Bond took a chance and saved a lot of lives. Can you imagine the carnage if we'd sent the police into that?”

Mallory was breathing heavily. 

Q blinked, staring. “Sir...” he hesitated. “If it would be of any assistance I'm sure I could take Bond and disappear for a few days?”

“Do that.”

Q smiled politely as his heart exploded with happy hula dancers. “Very good, Sir. Should I head off right now, Sir?”

“Take the first flight to Newcastle,” Mallory sighed the sigh of the weary who had spent too much time lately mopping up for wayward agents. “Best give it a couple of days to blow over. Pearce and I will straighten things out. I'm sure there's a few things we can say. Reducing harm to the public, using initiative, successful arrest...”

“Quite, Sir,” Q smiled and then when Mallory said nothing further Q took it as permission to start packing up his laptop. “But if you don't mind sir, I'm not a great flyer. I think I'd rather take the train.”

“I half expected you to suggest a road trip,” Ruth teased.

“Get out of here, Q.”

Q picked up his laptop and jacket. “Very good, Sir. I'll see you on Monday, Sir.”

Pearce shared a glance with Ruth as he watched the Quartermaster of MI6 dance out of the room on his way to a shagathon weekend with his secret boyfriend. Lucky for some.

“8am, Q. Monday. Sharp.”

“Yes, Sir. I'll be there.”

“And do try to herd Bond in the general direction of his employer at some point in the course of Monday morning, won't you? We'll need to do a full review of this entire fiasco!”

Q smiled politely. “Of course, Mallory. He won't want to miss a thing.”

~


End file.
